Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, he argued that Islam would be the panacea to Turkey’s ills. As a writer, publisher and media executive, he helped his fellow Islamists gain power to right past wrongs. Today, however, he has given up on them. He is disappointed in what his country has become and he is disheartened by his fellow Muslims’ failure to adhere to the Quranic notions of humility, honesty and justice.

Meet Levent Gultekin. His latest writings and interview with Al-Monitor offer simple yet effective ideas to a world plagued with Islamophobia and Islamic extremism.

Gultekin started his career as a journalist in 1994 with Turkey’s leading Islamist newspaper, Yeni Safak. In 2000, he established Gercek Hayat (Real Life) magazine, which enjoyed a respectable following among Turkey’s religious youth. A few years later, Gultekin became vice president of one of Turkey’s largest pro-government newspapers, Star. He resigned from that position in 2009 and wrote columns under the moniker “Acik Cenk” (Open War). Throughout this journey, Gultekin sought ways in which pious Muslims could improve their societies and governments in Turkey and elsewhere.

What makes Gultekin such a fascinating figure is that he foresaw the problems with political Islam in Turkey before the outbreak of hostilities between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and their former allies, the “Hizmet” movement led by cleric Fethullah Gulen. In 2012, Gultekin began to criticize the two sides for being more interested in taking over the reins of state rather than addressing Turkey’s fundamental problems with freedom, justice and democracy. In 2013, he took to task the Erdogan government and the pro-Gulen press for supporting the extremists in the Syrian civil war.